


Concerning Flight

by TheLibranIniquity



Series: Primeval/His Dark Materials fusion [2]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemon, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-14
Updated: 2010-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:31:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLibranIniquity/pseuds/TheLibranIniquity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Nine times out of ten, the first thing a person notices about someone else is their daemon.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Concerning Flight

Nine times out of ten, the first thing a person notices about someone else is their daemon. It's impossible not to draw assumptions from the form that daemon takes – there's a very good reason daemon psychiatry is a booming business, after all.

The first thing most people notice about Stephen Hart is the bird perched on his shoulder, and nine times out of ten they see – or think they see – a flightless bird, wholly tame, perched on the shoulder of someone with a distant, usually placid expression on his face. Often they'll draw the same conclusions: he's a dreamer, head in the clouds, he could be so much more if he just tried. And as long as he stays at a steady pace and she never takes flight, they'll continue to think that.

But sometimes Stephen and his falcon will do something that will challenge everyone's assumptions; something stupid, like charging a Permian-era dinosaur in the middle of a forest at night with a university-owned truck and concussion. And when that doesn't work, he'll shoot it properly dead with military precision while she swoops down again and again, talons outstretched and screeching loud enough to burst eardrums, every inch of her defying people to think she's anything but what she is – a barely-controlled predator, vicious to anything she considers prey.

People rarely assume things about Stephen Hart after witnessing something like that.

o o o o o

Two days after the Incident in the Forest of Dean – Claudia doesn't feel recovered enough to think of it as anything else yet, despite what her bosses and her bosses' bosses might think – Lerengorm pokes his head out from where he's been dozing.

“That professor of yours is back.”

At that, Claudia jerks in her seat and starts scrabbling at the papers and files that have been piling up on her desk all morning. It looks terribly disorganised and she's acutely aware that she still needs to make a good impression on Sir James Lester if she wants to stay involved with... whatever this is.

“Where is he?” she hisses under the desk. “Is he coming this way?”

There's no answer from Lerengorm and she has just enough time to feel completely lost before a voice from above her desk grabs her attention.

“Actually, he's got back to back lectures today.”

Claudia looks up to see Nick Cutter's research assistant, or whatever he'd referred to him as, standing on the other side of her desk. There's a large bird perched on his shoulder, and she seems intent on taking in the open plan office where Claudia was based rather than paying the woman herself any attention. Claudia takes the moment to try and work out what species the bird is; it's the first time she's had a proper chance to look at her in daylight and without the blurred edges that come from a massive, impossible adrenaline rush.

“That won't be a problem, will it?” Stephen Hart adds. He doesn't sound half as uncertain as anyone else might be, but two nights ago Claudia watched him charge down a dinosaur with a truck and then an assault rifle.

Stephen probably isn't the type to ruffle easily.

“Er, no,” she replies easily, masking her earlier momentary panic with calm professionalism. She shoots Lerengorm a brief, dirty look and vows to teach him the difference between forty-something Scottish professors and gorgeous younger assistants when they get home.

If they get home.

Stephen's still waiting for her to continue, though, and Claudia takes a deep breath to disguise the time it takes to make a decision.

“Why don't you pull up a seat?” she directs, masking it as a suggestion. “And we'll try to get to the bottom of all this paperwork.”

Stephen nods his acquiescence and pulls a chair over from an unoccupied desk. Only when he sits down does the bird on his shoulder crane her neck to look directly at Claudia, first, then Lerengorm.

She's a bird of prey, Claudia realises dimly. As if she could be anything else, and while Claudia still doesn't recognise the species, she doesn't think she needs to. Everything she needs to know about Stephen is in his daemon's eyes and it's enough to unsettle her.

Lerengorm's response to being clinically observed like that is to spread his wings slowly but to their full span, inevitably knocking some of the files off Claudia's desk in the process, which she quickly grabs out of mid-air. Under any other circumstances she'd be embarrassed by her swan's deliberate ostentation, but right now she recognises it for exactly what it is and is grateful.

Lerengorm refuses to be intimidated.

And if he won't be, then neither will Claudia.


End file.
